Thursday, February 17, 2011

02/17 Quickie: Pujols, Lakers, Vick, Leo, More

First, a final "Jerry! HEL-LO!" for Len Lesser, who played "Uncle Leo" on Seinfeld and passed away yesterday.

Albert Pujols and Cards don't come to a deal: This a.m., Pujols said all the right things, most importantly "want to be a Cardinal for life." However! The Cards blew it by not offering him what he deserves before we got to this point.

And now the Cubs or Nationals or any number of other teams are going to have a chance to either offer him 10Y/$300M -- or force the Cards into paying it to match (which I would hope they would do.)

Lakers stunned by Cavs: I'm sticking to my general notion that among NBA contenders -- and the Lakers still qualify -- any individual win or loss in the regular season is meaningless, as it relates to the Playoffs. The Lakers are still the team to beat.

Mike Vick bails on Oprah: What a mistake. First, you don't kiss off Oprah. Second, it makes him look like he is entirely satisfied with his rehabilitation, if rumors are to be believed that the show was going to force him to meet face-to-face with people who adopted his dogs.

Here's where Vick missed it: Oprah wasn't going to "James Frey" him. The "redemption" narrative HAS to include Vick facing his dogs and facing the people who saved those dogs. He could have continued to insist how sorry he was, how bad he feels -- on the biggest stage possible. Instead, he looks petty -- even indignant. That's not the image he wants to project.

(What Team Vick -- including the Eagles -- underestimates is that even if the Oprah thing went horribly, it would have been forgotten the first week Vick got on the field for the Eagles and led them to a win with his restored football career.)

Watson wins "Jeopardy": I'm with Ken Jennings (and "The Simpsons") -- I welcome our new robot overlords. The whole thing is a triumph of science (which, by necessity, is a triumph of humanity). It's an incredible achievement.

The Auburn tree massacre: The jokes about this aren't funny. It's pretty sick, actually. Just hoping that Auburn fans recognize this is the work of one lone Bama fan nutjob and not some sort of Tide-wide initiative. (UPDATE: An arrest has been made. The guy arrested sounds like a bit of a loon.)

SI's Grant Wahl is running for the President of FIFA -- for real! It's a worthy cause to support.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.